Today marked another opportunity to capture a transit, and this time, we had clear skies and I kept the timing straight in my head and everything. The target was the Tiangong space station, China’s own entry into low-Earth-orbit experiments and observations, and the waning crescent moon. I checked everything,
Author: Al Denelsbeck
Estate Find XXXIII: The secret is corn
Last week’s Find was still fresh on the, um, server memory thingy, whatever, when I got the first clips of this week’s. A few days later I was able to add to the stock, so we have a couple of days worth of observations, which also added in the number of other species appearing. So without further ado:
Now, this was not a total surprise, because we’d been down at the neighbor’s
Visibly different, part 55
Sure, this was the weekly topic three years ago, but who says it can’t be resurrected?
I mentioned a few days ago that I could illustrate something better, and now I’m keeping my promise. We’ll start with an image from several years back, with new annotations.
With the light angle of approaching 1st quarter, waxing crescent now, Theophilus crater stands
It’s a start
The other evening I was out, for some reason without the camera, and witnessed something that I knew was going on from time to time, but usually too far off to do anything useful about. I debated about specifically trying for some pics, which would require a nighttime stakeout, but never got beyond the contemplation stage.
Then tonight, I lucked out a bit.
North American raccoons
The Magic Bucket doesn’t differentiate
The other night I checked out the waste can outside the door to Walkabout Studios, otherwise known as the Magic Bucket of Variety (the can, not the studios,) to find that it had snagged yet another capture. This one was a small-ish wolf spider (Genus Lycosidae) and I noticed as I tipped it out that it looked a little odd. A closer inspection told me why, and once again I got the camera in hand.
Some other night
I don’t know, I think this was three nights ago, I just didn’t post it then. But while doing something else in the yard, I went past a dog fennel plant that was starting to get a little tall and found this:
Now, “a little tall” is relative to the surrounding grasses, which weren’t topping 20cm, but this was a bit less than a meter in height, and far
I’m selfish
I’ve been having reminders popping up from my calendar that the Perseids meteor shower is peaking within the next few days, and various sites that I’ve visited have been promoting it as one of the best showers of the year, insofar as number and display. But I’ve been neglecting posting about it for two reasons, the first being very self-centered: the skies have
Estate Find XXXII: Always have fresh batteries
While occasional Estate Finds are kind of lackluster, others serve as the first time that I’ve witnessed something cool, and this is one of those – though be warned, it’s also graphic and features nothing but snakes.
Yes, both of these species have been featured before – but not like this (geez that sounds like clickbait.) Doing some tasks out in the back
Just because, part 56
Heard the distinctive calls of the Mississippi kite (Ictinia mississippiensis) while working at my desk, which is somewhat unusual – I’m never at my desk they don’t call very often, usually wheeling overhead silently. So I went out with the long lens and eventually snagged a nice shot of one perched in a tree nearby.
The bird passing overhead is a blue jay (Cyanocitta
It’s all cycles or something
It’s been interesting living right on the edge of an ecosystem, and I know that makes little sense because we’re all within an ecosystem no matter what, but what I mean is, we can observe the behavior of the wildlife that uses the ponds throughout the year, at all times of the day and night, and so patterns emerge. We have yet to determine how regular they are, but we see shifts